MAY GOD BLESS YOU
“LaFayette, Ind., March 30, 1866.
“Dear Miss Barton:—
“Will you please excuse a bereaved Mother again addressing you. I have seen by the papers that you have visited Andersonville. Can you give me any information respecting my dear lost son, my poor boy, as you have visited the graves of the precious dead; did you find the name of John Newton Strain? Oh! it would be a satisfaction, although a melancholy one, to know where his dear remains rest and oh! if I could only have them brought home, my noble boy, no better son a Mother ever had. If he had died on the field of battle it would not have been so hard. He belonged to the New York 2nd Cavalry Co. I. Dear Miss, if you can give me any information it will be most thankfully received and the best I can say is, may God bless you and be your great reward.
“From your afflicted friend,
(Signed) “Eliza Foresman.
“Lafayette, Ind.”
“Please answer.”
I have too often wiped the gathering damp from pale anxious brows and caught from a shy quivering lip the last faint whispers of home, not to realize the terrible cost of these separations.
Clara Barton.
The history of Andersonville is the most sad, and at the same time the most discouraging to our confidence in man’s inhumanity to man, of all the episodes of the Civil War.—Harper’s Weekly, Oct. 7, 1865.
The name of Clara Barton will be held in grateful remembrance whenever and wherever human needs are weighed in the scales of human want.—Washington Gardner.
By permission of “Harper’s Weekly.”
CEMETERY AT ANDERSONVILLE, GEORGIA
The Department of Georgia, Grand Army of the Republic, early secured title to the Andersonville stockade, which it later transferred to the National organization, Woman’s Relief Corps, Auxiliary to the Grand Army of the Republic. This body, after having purchased very considerable additions and improved and beautified the whole through a period of sixteen years, deeded the entire property to the United States Government which, together with the cemetery, will be held in trust perpetually as the most tragic and hallowed plot of ground under the flag. Washington Gardner, Post Commander-in-Chief, G. A. R., in his memorial address, May 31, 1915.
The number of graves marked is 19,920. Scattered among the thickly designated graves stand four hundred tablets, bearing only the number and the touching inscription “Unknown Union Soldiers.”—(Signed) Clara Barton, in an official report to the people of the United States of America, in 1865.
The winds will blow, the skies will weep,
Where fair Columbia’s heroes sleep,
And Clara Barton’s name is known
Where waves our flag or stands a throne;
The work she did fills every heart
Wherein affection hath a part;
A woman to her country true,
She marked the graves where sleep the Blue.
—From the dedicatory poem Clara Barton, by T. C. Harbaugh.